a fortnight,
being only able to eat a very little in all that time, by reason of our
great want of drink. Saving that now and then we enjoyed as it were a
feast, when rain or hail chanced to fall, on which occasions we gathered
up the hail-stones with the most anxious care, devouring them more
eagerly than if they had been the finest comfits. The rain-drops also
were caught and saved with the utmost careful attention; for which
purpose some hung up sheets tied by the four corners, having a weight in
the middle, to make the rain run down there as in a funnel into some
vessel placed underneath. Those who had no sheets hung up napkins or
other clouts, which when thoroughly wet they wrung or sucked to get the
water they had imbibed. Even the water which fell on the deck under
foot, and washed away the filth and soil of the ship, though as dirty as
the kennel is in towns during rain, was carefully watched and collected
at every scupper-hole, nay, often with strife and contention, and caught
in dishes, pots, cans, and jars, of which some drank hearty draughts,
mud and all, without waiting for its settlement or cleansing. Others
cleaned it by filtrating, but it went through so slowly that they could
ill endure to wait so long, and were loath to lose so much precious
liquid. Some licked the water like dogs with their tongues from the
decks, sides, rails, and masts of the ship. Others, that were more
ingenious, fastened girdles or ropes about the masts, daubing tallow
between these and the mast, that the rain might not run down between;
and making one part of these girdles lower than the rest, fixed spouts
of leather at these lower parts, that the rain running down the masts
might meet and be received at these spouts. He who was fortunate enough
to procure a can of water by these means, was sued to, and envied as a
rich man.

_Quem pulchrum digito monstrari, et dicere hic est_.

Some of the poor Spaniards who were prisoners, though having the same
allowance with our own men, often begged us for the love of God to give
them as much water as they could hold in the hollow of their hands: And,
notwithstanding our own great extremity, they were given it, to teach
them some humanity, instead of their accustomed barbarity both to us and
other nations. Some put leaden bullets into their months, to slack their
thirst by chewing them. In every corner of the ship, the miserable cries
of the sick and wounded were sounding lamentably in